On several occasions, particularly on the periphery of the Habsburg Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries, dead people were suspected of being revenants or vampires, and consequently dug up and destroyed. Some contemporary authors named this phenomenon Magia Posthuma. This blog is dedicated to understanding what happened and why.

Wednesday, 30 July 2008

Exhibiting Valvasor

Years ago a friend and I wrote to the Royal Library in Copenhagen suggesting that they arranged an exhibition of books relating to vampires. Well, we got a polite no, but I still think it is a promising idea. One of the books in the collections of the library that should be included in an exhibition like this one is the magnificent book Die Ehre des Hertzogthums Crain by Johann Weichard Valvasor published in 1689.

In an earlier post I have reprinted a small portion from this book while discussing the shepherd of Blov, but a digitalized edition of the whole book is available here. The link goes directly to the page where you will find the excerpt that I reprinted from my old photocopy in my post.

Reading a digital book on the internet certainly isn't like holding the book in your hands, but the digital edition of Valvasor does allow you to study all the nice engravings that are included in this large format book, and you can do so 24/7 all around the globe, so I'm not complaining. But the book would be ideal in an exhibition of vampire books!

The Royal Library in co-operation with libraries in a number of EU countries is offering eBooks on demand (EOD), which means that the first one to order a book pays a fee to have the digital book made, whereas future users can use the eBook for free! As the fee is pretty low, it is hopefully a very handy way of getting books digitized for the benefit of everyone interested in old books!

I can't remember seeing an online version of that one. Unfortunately, there is still no easy way of locating e-books, so it may be out there. This Polish site does contain a couple of pages, but sadly they are hard to read.

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Magia Posthuma is the title of a book written by the Catholic lawyer Karl Ferdinand von Schertz in 1704. In the book von Schertz examines the case of a spectre that roamed about and harmed the living. Several of these cases were known in Moravia where von Schertz published his book, as well as in neighbouring areas. Only two decades later, a similar case was investigated by Austrian officials in North Eastern Serbia. The local people called the spectre a vampire. This incident inspired the deacon Michael Ranft to publish a study on the mastication of the dead. Just a few years later, in 1732, another case of vampirism was investigated in Serbia. Reports of this investigation were published throughout Europe with the consequence that the interest in vampires exploded. Vampires became the topic of numerous learned articles and books. Cases of magia posthuma or vampirism, however, kept occurring. In 1755 empress Maria Theresa aided by her court physician Gerard van Swieten began passing laws against the exhumation and destruction of corpses as well as other acts of superstition. Within decades, however, vampires caught the imagination of poets and authors of gothic fiction. Subsequently popularized by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula and numerous movies, vampires have become part of everyday modern mythology, but the historical and cultural background has not yet been fully explored and understood. In fact, the modern conception of the vampiric count bears little or no resemblance to the revenants of the 18th century, and several modern books rather obscure than enlighten us on the early modern European revenants and vampires. This blog is an informal and personal contribution to the enterprise of exploring and understanding what happened and why.